Floating around the wobbly web for some time now has been a digital pattern (see below) rumoured to be under development for the Dutch armed forces.

Well it seems rumour has become fact with this picture (below) coming to light. It shows members of a Dutch army NCO training school wearing the new pattern, and a new uniform design too. A desert pattern is also to be fielded, but no word on whether it is the same as the arid design shown above.

Battlefield Dazzle Camouflage Disrupts Enemy’s Perception

Historic military camouflage designs could return to the 21st century battlefield after the release of a new study that describes their value to modern warfighters.

Produced by a research team based at the UK’s University of Bristol, the study describes how-so called ‘dazzle camouflage’ could be a valuable tool on the frontline and how, ultimately, it could prove to be a lifesaver.

Dazzle camouflage consists of a series of patterns, with the emphasis on sharp, irregular angles, high contrast and other disruptive features.

According to the Bristol camouflage researchers, if applied to armoured vehicles and other military technologies used on the battlefield, dazzle schemes could effectively confuse enemy forces. That’s especially true if viewed on moving vehicles, with their markings basically becoming a series of blurred patterns that would be hard to track and, thus, better protected against enemy-launched weapons.

Dazzle Camouflage

Dazzle camouflage was a feature of both WW1 and WW2. Applied to battleships at sea, it was conceived as a way of giving the enemy a false impression of what they were actually looking at. When faced with a non-standard camouflage design, seen from a distance, how could they really be sure of the warship’s range, speed, shape or compass heading?

No previous research has ever been carried out into the scientific effect of dazzle camouflage on the brain but that’s now been addressed by a team led by Doctor Nick Scott-Samuel, of Bristol University. He and his colleagues have now shown that a high-speed object, painted in dazzle camouflage, can disrupt ideas of just how fast it’s moving.

On that basis, there’s strong evidence to suggest that dazzle camouflage, painted on relatively slow-moving ships at sea, probably wouldn’t have been that effective, but the same technique applied to relatively fast-moving battlefield vehicles would likely have much more of an impact.

Disruptive Battlefield Camouflage

Therefore, disruptive battlefield camouflage, said Doctor Scott-Samuel, could literally prove to be a lifesaver.

“The effect should obtain in predators launching ballistic attacks against rapidly moving prey, or on modern, low-tech battlefields where handheld weapons are fired from short ranges against moving vehicles”, he explained, in a press release published by Bristol University at the start of June, 2011.

“In the latter case, we show that in a typical situation involving an RPG7 attack on a Land Rover the reduction in perceived speed would be sufficient to make the grenade miss where it was aimed by about a metre, which could be the difference between survival or otherwise for the occupants of the vehicle.”

News from the Balkans, via Soldier Systems: After several years that saw some unusual digitally-designed camouflage schemes getting publicity as ‘the next new Serbian pattern’ (see examples below), the real-deal is now on show.

From the small, publicly available pictures I’ve seen, the new pattern seems to combine a Multicam style blurred/hard-edged background pattern of three shades (olive green, grey-green and light khaki) with sharper edged, fractal type shapes in rust brown and black.

…. well, for some of them anyway. The article below is reproduced courtesy of Strategy Page. All errors with reference to the ABU (Airman Battle Uniform) and UCP (Universal Camouflage Pattern) are theirs ;-)

September 17, 2010: U.S. Air force personnel in Afghanistan have been buying (or scrounging from kindly army supply sergeants) the new MultiCam pattern uniforms. That’s because the air force uses a different camouflage pattern for their field uniforms, and when air force air controllers (who call in air strikes) move through the hills with army troops, it’s obvious from a distance who the air force personnel are. Actually, it makes all the troops more visible, because the MultiCam is pretty good at hiding those wearing it, but the difference between the air force camo and the MultiCam is so striking that the entire group of troops becomes more visible. The air force brass eventually got the message, and have started buying MultiCam uniforms for air force troops operating in combat along with army troops.

This was not the first problem of this sort. While the MultiCam was a an improvement on the older ACU pattern uniforms, the troops did not get new packs (which also use camo pattern cloth) at the same time they received the MultiCam uniforms. Thus when troops went off into the hills, the combination of MultiCam uniforms and ACU pattern packs do a lot to ruin the camouflage effect.

The U.S. military has been having a tough decade when it comes to camouflage uniforms. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. Army has changed camouflage patterns for their combat uniforms twice. First it was the adoption of digital patterns, then the current move to MultiCam.

It was SOCOM (special operations command) troops who first had second thoughts about the older digital camo pattern. The digital camouflage pattern uses “pixels” (little square or round spots of color, like you will find on your computer monitor if you look very closely), instead of just splotches of different colors. Naturally, this was called “digital camouflage.” This pattern proved considerably more effective at hiding troops than older methods.

For example, in tests, it was found that soldiers wearing digital pattern uniforms were 50 percent more likely to escape detection by other troops, than if they were wearing standard green uniforms. What made the digital pattern work was the way the human brain processed information. The small “pixels” of color on the cloth makes the human brain see vegetation and terrain, not people. One could provide a more technical explanation, but the “brain processing” one pretty much says it all. Another advantage of the digital patterns is that they can also fool troops using night vision scopes. American troops are increasingly running up against opponents who have night optics, so wearing a camouflage pattern that looks like vegetation to someone with a night scope, is useful.

But digital doesn’t rule, at least not when price is no object. The runner-up in the competition was a non-digital pattern called MultiCam (cleverly designed to hide troops in many different environments). Many in the army preferred this one, but the difference, in tests, between it and the winner, digital ACU, was not that great. Moreover, MultiCam was about three times more expensive.

However, SOCOM operators have their own budget, and had many of their guys out in the field wearing MultiCam, rather than the digital ACU. Now SOCOM has always had a larger budget, per capita, than the rest of the army, and its operators had a lot of discretion to use whatever weapons or gear they thought best for the job. Apparently, on some jobs, MultiCam was considered more suitable than digital ACU. That said, there have been few complaints from soldiers about ACU, which measures up to MultiCam in most particulars, and it a lot cheaper.

Eventually, the services decided that if MultiCam provided even a small advantage over digital, than MultiCam was the way to go. The British Army thought the same thing, and are now sending new uniforms, using a version of MultiCam, to their troops. But for the new MultiCam to work, everything the troops wear has to be MultiCam. And everyone out with the troops, especially air force air controllers, need to be dressed in MultiCam as well.

My ICUS colleague Jon has launched a website for his new business ‘Better Camo’ whose stated aim is to

“achieve superior concealment through the use of large, environmental texture and color based, digitally designed camouflage patterns”

With two or three different textures on display, and having observed and absorbed the lessons learned by trailblazing companies like Hyde Definition, Better Camo looks set to add its distinctive look to the digital camouflage revolution.

Hyde Definition, the digital camouflage and concealment company I run, has finally finished revamping its website. Well actually, not quite, as there are still one or two things that need adding and tidying, but to all intents and purposes it is done. Come on over and take a look!

Metamaterials can bend light around objects to render them near-invisible, begins a recent report in New Scientist. But it is an imperfect, lossy process, meaning some light is absorbed on its way through the metamaterial, and therefore the object remains semi-visible.

Now a team of scientists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana have invented a light amplifying resin ‘sandwich filling’ which, when stimulated by a laser, creates gain in the electro-optical signal, restoring the ‘lost’ light. The “negative-index metamaterial” means that an object can now conceivably be made invisible to specific wavelengths of light.

Previous metamaterials, utilising nanoholes in a carbon matrix, IIRC, were able to mask objects in the microwave end of the electromagnetic spectrum, but visible light has until now been elusive.

A wearable device is still light years away (pardon the pun!), but military installations, ships and even armoured vehicles are most definitely foreseeable near-term applications for the invisibility treatment.